[biz.yahoo.com]

Are you serious? How is justice a bad precedent?

While I agree that companies should be held liable for their actions, and actions of others on or with their assets, allowing such lawsuits is dangerous.

For the most part, a company or individual has no control over what a foreign goverment, military or "authority" does within their borders or property.

Even in the US territories, US law doesn't always trump local law or even exist in some cases.

If this is to be allowed, then ultimately the US government will have to be the ones to pay for it, which means you and me.

Agreed Haole....Exxon cannot be responcible for what the foreign government does unless directly implicated. Foreign policy and many other implications.

We are now past the procedural hurdles and can finally proceed to the discovery stage, which means we can subpoena Exxon Mobil documents revealing how much and for how long they paid the Indonesian military."

If Exxon was, in fact, paying the Indonesian military (bribes, protection money, or for actual security services at the Exxon facility) then it is not the case that Exxon "ha[d] no control over what a foreign...military" was doing.

Certainly, if Exxon knowingly{/i] allowed the military to use a facility under the control of the company to conduct human rights abuses, then the corporation should be held liable.

Corporations are always lobbying for the same kinds of protections afforded individuals, but are reluctant to accept the increased responsibilities that come with those protections. If this were an individual US citizen, not a US corporation, there would -- I suspect -- be little discussion of the propriety of legal proceedings to determine his or her complicity in the abuses undertaken on his or her property.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2006 04:32PM by x-uri.

Suzanne -
If you hire a gang of thugs to protect your home, and they bring their victims, with your permission, into your basement to torture them do you have no responsibility? You've enabled them to commit a crime and hence are complicit in it, and by simply refusing the gang the use of your basement you might have prevented the crime.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2006 08:23AM by Refurbvirgin.

I don't know if Exxon paid the military but I bet a dollar if you don't pay them something for protection you get shot or your wells burned.I'm sure that is the cost of doing business all over the world.

What the military does on their own time is not the responsibility of Exxon.

samintx Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't know if Exxon paid the military but I bet
> a dollar if you don't pay them something for
> protection you get shot or your wells burned.I'm
> sure that is the cost of doing business all over
> the world.

Exxon is in partnership with the government to exploit oil resources (which are by rights the property of the Indonesian people) and paying them hefty royalties on any oil they extract, so why would the government sabotage Exxon's operation? That doesn't make sense. Your own article states:

"Exxon's executives had previously said the military deployed four infantry battalions and an armored cavalry unit during the conflict at a natural gas field and pipeline operated by the company on behalf of Indonesia's state-run Pertamina energy conglomerate."

So the military was there protecting Exxon's property, no doubt at their request, but certainly with their permission, so your justification is groundless.

> What the military does on their own time is not
> the responsibility of Exxon.

Do you really believe that if Exxon had said, "sorry, but we don't want you to torture anyone in our facility" that would have caused a backlash? The notoriously corrupt and dictatorial government of Indonesia is lining their pockets through Exxon's extraction of resources that belong rightfully to the impoverished people of Indonesia.

Without Exxon's expertise and equipment the cash cow would run dry. The crooks in power there aren't going to harm their relationship with Exxon. Exxon perhaps allowed the torture because the locals were upset about their resources being stolen and it helped keep opposition to their exploitation under control.

So... just how much Exxon stock do you own, Suzanne?






Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2006 05:31PM by Refurbvirgin.

I own a lot, buddy. And I don't believe Exxon is exploiting the people by building old drilling facilities and paying them handsomely for the oil and high pay jobs.

Just another tree hugger and flaming liberal making Exxon out as the bad guy here. Oil companies are not always right but in this instance, from my reading, Exxon is not the bad guy and the ruling is setting a dangerous precedent.

thirty.

samintx Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I own a lot, buddy.

I surmised as much from your intense partisanship in this matter.

ExxonMobil:
How the Company is Linked with Indonesian Military Killings, Torture and other Severe Abuse in Aceh, Indonesia

"Mobil Oil Indonesia (collectively "Exxon Mobil"), hired military units of the Indonesian national army to provide "security" for their gas extraction and liquification project in Aceh, Indonesia. Members of these military units regularly have perpetrated ongoing and severe human rights abuses against local villagers, including murder, rape, torture, destruction of property and other acts of terror. ExxonMobil apparently has taken no action to stop this violence, and instead, reportedly has continued to finance the military and to provide company equipment and facilities that have been used by the Indonesian military to perpetrate and literally cover up (in the form of mass graves) these criminal acts."
[www.laborrights.org]

Enjoy your convertible, Suzanne. The privileged life you lead comes at a cost for others not so fortunate.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/08/2006 08:32PM by Refurbvirgin.

BBC article:
Exxon 'helped torture in Indonesia'
[news.bbc.co.uk]

Exxon posts $36.1 billion in profits, highest in U.S. history
[seattletimes.nwsource.com]

These guys (& gals, evidently) are modern day robber-barons, devoid of conscience and ethics.

ExxonMobil-Sponsored Terrorism?
"Why are villagers in the Aceh province of Indonesia--or their lawyers--worrying about contributions from Exxon Mobil to George W. Bush and the Republicans?"
[www.thenation.com]

How Exxon and Its Rent-a-Cops Used the Guise of Homeland Security to Purge One of Louisiana's Environmental Champions
[www.counterpunch.org]

Exxon, and its investors, have lots of innocent blood on their hands.

Here's an interesting theory:
Could Exxon-Mobil Works Have Tripped Indonesian Tsunami?
[pesn.com]

No surprise here:
"Exxon Mobil Corp. shareholders voted down proposals concerning global warming and renewable energy, as the head of the global energy giant said profits take precedence over social causes."
[www.planetark.org]

I guess the question I have for Suzanne and other Exxon stockholders, in light of the $36.1 billion in profits they made this last year, is "how much is enough?"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2006 12:32AM by Refurbvirgin.

A lot of this could go away if corporate entities were held to the same standard of justice an individual is held.

If the corporate commits a crime let it be dissolved and assets sold. That might get someones attention.

---

"Who's more foolish - the fool or the fool that follows him?" - Obi Wan Kenobi

Corporate abuse of power is nothing new. Thousands of years ago it was written "the love of money is the root of all evil."

More recently a man known as Thomas Jefferson warned:

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

He also said :
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

And yet our government has been corrupted by the love of money the authors of the Christian Bible warned would lead us to evil, and, in a tribute to the power of market competition, we have the best government money can buy, of, by, and for the wealthy.

We are no longer a republic, but a plutocracy. Running for the senate from even a small state costs tens of millions of dollars, to acquire employment paying $155k/year, so those costs are paid by those expecting favors in return, and that debt must be repaid if the incumbent expects reelection support. The obvious solution is to publicly fund elections so that anyone who can raise sufficient signatures of his fellow citizens can find his way to the ballot, with equal access to publicity and the voters ear.

It's not that we have not been warned of the power of wealth to corrupt.

"We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of few," said Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "but we can't have both."






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2006 07:42AM by Refurbvirgin.